Paid vs. Organic Marketing: How to Use Each in Your Marketing Strategy

Are you more likely to read or watch content shared by someone you trust, be it an influencer or a personal contact? I certainly am.

Word of mouth used to mean face-to-face connections, but today, it could mean a mention on a podcast or a Facebook friend’s share. This is called organic marketing.

But to start a wildfire, you need an initial spark to catch on. This isn’t always easy with organic marketing alone, which is why there’s another avenue that helps people to find you. Paid marketing drives your content directly to your ideal audience with just a few clicks.

But how do you know when and where to use paid vs. organic marketing? We’ve got the secrets below.

What Is Paid Marketing?

Paid marketing, or paid traffic, is any time you pay for ads or clicks, whether on Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or another platform.

Paid marketing expands your audience through Meta pixels, email list growth, product conversions, downloads, trial offers, and more.

Paid Marketing Pros & Cons

Paid marketing is great for the short term because it expedites your efforts, but you must pay to play.

With paid marketing, you use targeted ads to find small, niche audiences hungry for your product or service. Paid marketing is also helpful in the middle of your sales funnel, especially for re-targeting leads.

Say you download a research paper from a potential vendor. You’re now on their email list, and every day, you see their ads in your Facebook feed. These ads aren’t blatant; they’re educational pieces like quick tips, case studies, and videos of their team.

Suddenly, you feel you know this team, and you agree with their business philosophy... even though you’ve never met them. Is this black magic?

Not at all. They showed you the right messages while you were looking for trust, social proof, and credibility. But you didn’t have to dig. They came to you. That’s the power of paid traffic.

Unfortunately, if paid traffic is your only focus and you suddenly stop paying, your traffic and lead sources dry up.

People who are most susceptible to paid search — people looking for a quick fix who don’t have the time to be nurtured by long-term marketing strategies — are often fickle, which means they may not stick around for your long-term marketing strategies.

Paid Marketing Strategies & Tips

1. Use organic marketing to better inform your paid ad reach, and vice versa.
2. When considering paid marketing, remember that every platform is different. For example, Google PPC (pay-per-click) uses intent-based targeting, which considers what users want when searching. Facebook ads use interest-based targeting, which identifies target audiences based on the groups, people, and pages users like.

What Is Organic Marketing?

Organic marketing is content that’s either earned (like a press mention) or owned (like a blog post). Organic marketing efforts include blog posts, videos, social media posts, newsletters, guest postings, etc.

Organic marketing is an investment that keeps growing, like compound interest.

For example, maybe you start by choosing keywords you want to rank for and start incorporating them into your content. At first, the build may be slow, but your authority and reach grow as you promote the content around those keywords.

The more patient you are as you continue to invest, the greater your returns will be.

Every new post or page you create is a door from Google to your website. The more targeted content you create, the more opportunities your prospects have to find you when they search for answers.

Organic marketing is a larger time investment, but it’s worth the effort. How many times has someone suggested you check out a YouTube or Instagram video of some influencer with millions of subscribers you’ve never heard of? The same principle can work for you.

A random social share, DM, or verbal mention may bring a new perfect-fit lead to your site. Stay consistent, and the right people will find you.

Organic Marketing Pros & Cons

Organic marketing incentivizes you to grow your network and share your content. It also forces you to become more familiar with your content as you repurpose and re-promote — but you have to put in work to be seen, and it won’t happen overnight.

Unfortunately, organic search rankings are volatile, and they aren’t guaranteed. But a solid strategy pays off, as does testing and modifying your content to improve your rankings.

Examples of Organic Marketing

Want to kick off a great organic marketing strategy? Consider the following approaches:

• Ask a blogger or influencer to review your product. Bonus points if they film themselves using it.
• Ask industry professionals to share your content with their mailing lists.
• Share client video testimonials in your email marketing and social channels.
• Guest blog for someone in your industry whose content aligns with yours.
• Be a guest on a podcast and create a special free download for listeners.
• Find a site that publishes content similar to yours and ask them to backlink your work.
• Google your name, brand, and business. See if any blogs or publications have mentioned you and if there are backlinking opportunities.
• Share your content regularly on social media so others can share it too.

Organic Marketing Strategies & Tips

1. Optimize your content for SEO, but always write for humans — not robots. Cold, disconnected writing won’t engage your audience.
2. Organize your site like a library, not a newspaper. Use our cornerstone content strategy to get started.
3. Connect resources on your site with internal links. This makes it easier for site visitors to find what they’re looking for and it improves SEO.
4. Own your content promotion. Decide who’s in charge of what step.
5. Since organic marketing is a long-term strategy, manage your expectations. It’s highly unlikely you’ll blow up overnight.
6. Take not of your customers’ most frequently asked questions and create content that answers them. It’s a built-in way better serve your audience and anticipate prospects’ needs.
7. Focus on educating your customers — and doing it better than anyone else.

Organic vs. Paid Search: How to Use Both

So, should you use paid or organic marketing to draw new clients and grow your business?

The truth is, you don’t have to pick one or the other. The real question is when to use each for maximum impact.

If you start with paid marketing — before you know for a fact what your target audience likes and dislikes — you’ll end up paying for it (literally). Instead, I recommend starting with organic marketing. Once you figure out which tactics, platforms, topics, and content types convert well with your audience, then apply those in a paid strategy.

Be strategic, modify as needed, and your ideal audience will find (and stick with) you.